Tuesday, July 19, 2011

This has been an intense year. I got a late start on The Daemon Prism, thanks to the previous intense year writing The Soul Mirror. Every time I got moving on TDP, I would get sidetracked by Soul Mirror revisions or copyedits or proof pages or postcards or whatever. And then holidays. By New Year's 2011 I felt I was barely started (well, ok, 40-50K words) but I certainly didn't have a good handle on the underlying themes of the books. Which meant I had exactly four months to finish the book, not to mention figuring out what it was about. So what did I do?

I completely immersed myself in the book. Every day I wrote until I made some kind of progress. My Exceptional Spouse took on all the other necessities. The dust piled up. The weeds grew taller. The house looked like sleeping beauty's wall of thorns. But late in March, I got up one morning and wrote a creation myth for Sabria's world. I realized that this piece of the Collegia Magica mystery stemmed from the fundamental truths of the world. By April 48th (deadline was end of April!) I turned in a raw, rowdy, oversized manuscript to my editor. After a week to catch my breath, I started revising. And on July 15 I sent in a finished, trimmed, coherent, and mostly polished manuscript. It was like...magic!

Yes, it is supposed to be Dante. And no he is not at all as I imagine him. Not even as I described him. They got Anne and Portier close to right, but this one... I mentioned leather gloves, but I also said his right hand was clawed. There is no jewel on top of his staff... Sigh. He is actually about 30 in this book and is described many times as having heavy dark brows and gaunt cheeks...uh-huh. Ah, well...

Great news about the (almost!) finished book, I join all the others in saying I can't wait to read it. I'll just have to go back to biting my fingernails until Jan rolls round...*looks at already mangled nails and sighs*

But, I have to agree with you, Carol. That is not Dante. It's disappointing because they did the first two so well, and now with this one, they couldn't get any of the details you mentioned right. And I was so looking forward to seeing those green eyes of his...

Oh dear. I'm sorry the cover didn't come out the way you hoped. I think it's gorgeous, though they didn't get the details right. I always had trouble picturing him as young as he's supposed to be, and this is a lovely picture (when I enlarged it on my screen I swear the eyes started following me!) but I think I prefer the Portier cover best out of all three. Won't stop me from devouring the book, though! So looking forward to it!